Songbird has released the “Almost 0.2″ version of their media player and it looks like it could be promising. You may think that the last thing we need is another media player but this one will be different.
One of the features that I noticed right away was the ability to browse a website and have it popup when it finds a music or movie file. It will then give you several options such as saving the file to your library or adding it to a playlist. Very nice!
It is also similar to Winamp in the respect that it supports extensions and skins (which they call feathers), but it is built off of Firefox so it is open source as well. It is kinda the best of both worlds and if this becomes as popular as Firefox I could only imagine the cool extensions we would start to see.
Their full-scale extension site is yet to launch but they have posted links to a few people who already have working extensions:
- Minimize to Tray – Minimize Songbird to your system tray (Windows only)
- eMusic Extension - Discover new music in Songbird with the eMusic extension.
- Artist Tracker Songbird Extension - Keep track of your favorite artists with the artist tracker Songbird extension.
- iPod Device Songbird Extension - Synchronize your iPod with your Songbird library using the iPod device Songbird extension.
- iTunes Playlist Songbird Extension - Copy your iTunes playlist to Songbird with the iTunes playlist Songbird extension.
- Library File Organizer Songbird Extension - Organize the songs in your music library with the music library file organizer Songbird extension.
- Audioscrobbler
So the list of extensions is not very large right now but I am sure they will quickly gain followers. I will definitely be watching this project for future releases.
Downloaded this yesterday. It has lots of potential but it’ll take a few more versons to make it an iTunes replacement.
Edit: Oh and if you converted any songs to gapless in iTunes they wont work
The great thing is that people will probably start creating huge numbers of plug-ins that will make it even more like iTunes. Heck, I’m sure we’ll even see skins that will make it look like iTunes, WinAmp, or Windows Media Player.